The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) (52 page)

Jack grinned, wagging his head from side to side. “Those girls never met a stranger.”

“I guess you’d know; she mentioned the fact that you and Rick have been carrying on with the two of them for the longest time.”

His grin easing, Jack said, “Yeah, it’s nice when you can stay up with the home folks. I reckon Hap took that news in stride.”

“Oh, she didn’t say anything in front of him; she gave me her business card and asked me to call her. Said she had something important to discuss with me. So I called her.”

“And what was so important?”

“Well, she said that she and Dolores ‘saw’ you, soon after you left their apartment when you came up for Thanksgiving last year. But you were nowhere near
Long Island; you were, according to their ‘vision’ at least, in what appeared to be Bisque’s airport. Does that ring a bell?”

Jack’s head dropped, his chin nearing his chest. “Anything else?”

“Jack, She said that they saw you getting on a large airplane. A man with a mustache opened the door, and steps dropped down so you could get aboard. As you did, the man cautioned you to step around some dead or unconscious people that he said were ‘the President’s assassins.’ Please tell me that they’re off their rocker, honey.”

Raising his head, Jack looked his mother in the eye. He said, “I wish I could, Mom.”

Serena took a few seconds to respond, her mouth momentarily making a letter-O. “Oh, Jack. What in the hell have you gotten into?”

Jack moved to sit beside her. “Remember I mentioned to you that Pete and Linda were shuttling stuff around the
Caribbean?? Well, most of it was for the CIA. They had an assignment to pick up some ‘fishermen’ just outside
Dallas
on the afternoon of November 22nd. They were listening to the radio reports of the Kennedy assassination when the ‘fishermen’ showed up on the dock at this little lake where they were to pick them up. All three of them were carrying golf bags. When they reached the Gulf’s deep water, the aircraft began yawing, pulling, to the left. Their passengers had opened the top half of the cargo door and were about to drop the guns that had been in the golf bags overboard.

Linda went back to see what was causing it; one of them shot her with a poison dart, apparently by accident, when she stepped through the cabin door. Another one came into the cockpit, shouting at Pete about their instruction that the crew, under no circumstances, were to enter the passenger cabin. ‘But she did, and now she’s dead,’ the guy said, or words to that effect. When he went back to the cabin, Pete pulled the nose of the aircraft way up, throwing the three guys and Linda into a heap in the tail. Then he leveled out, engaged the autopilot, pulled a small automatic weapon from the bag behind his seat, went aft and killed all three of them.”

Serena dropped the hand that had flown inadvertently to her mouth. “Oh, Jack! Was she really dead?”

“That’s the good part; Pete was finally able to bring her around. Apparently something in a pocket of her Mae West- her life preserver- slowed this dart or whatever it was down so that she got only a trace of the poison that it’d been dipped in. But they were still in a hell of a bind, because they knew that the guys Pete killed were some of, if not all of, the Kennedy assassins. They sure as hell couldn’t go back to
Miami, deliver three dead ‘fishermen’ and appeal to the CIA’s better nature. So Pete made the decision. He had enough fuel to make it to Bisque and pick me up. Then we could put our heads together to see what sort of hiding place we could figure out for them until the whole assassination mess blew over. News reports said that the
Dallas
police thought ‘that they had their man’, but Pete could very easily be facing triple murder charges unless everybody’s satisfied that the plane crashed in the Gulf. I don’t think it’s safe for me to tell you any more than that, at least right now.”

“I guess I can understand that, Jack, but I do have a question.”

“What’s that?”

“How did you decide to go to Bisque in time to meet Pete and Linda? Did you drive Hap’s car? You must’ve left a couple of days before the assassination.”

Jack nodded slowly, repetitively. “Somehow I knew that I needed to be in Bisque, but I had no idea why. Maybe I picked up some kind of a signal from some of the stuff that was banging around inside Diana and Dolores’s heads.”

“Who was at the airport?”

“Just Gene Debs.”

“Oh, God. Did he see the bodies?”

“No. The aircraft just pulled up to the edge of the ramp, they dropped the ladder and I got in.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Just that they were ferrying a new plane that we’d just bought down to Miami, and that I’d be back in a couple of days for the car.”

Her expression turning businesslike, Serena said, “so they’re in hiding now, and as long as Gene Debs denies that you were there, your story’s that you were with the Bishop girls until after Thanksgiving?.”

“Yep. I don’t think they’ll mind, if it comes to my being charged or even investigated, if it came to that.”

“You’d best make sure. How secure do you think Linda and Pete are?”

“Very. I’d stake my life on it.”

“Then maybe we’d better move along to the second thing Diana told me. It’s about Rick.”

Still second-guessing himself at having confirmed the twins’ vision of the assassins, Jack took a few seconds to refocus. “OK; what’re they giving him credit for?”

“Well, for openers, murder.”

His jaw tightly set, Jack locked his green eyes onto those of his mother. “Please don’t tell me that they, of all people, have gone anti-war on us. Killing is what soldiers do, and he’s gone back to do more of it, if necessary. Where do they get off calling it murder?”

Serena’s features softened as she held Jack’s gaze. “What they saw wasn’t something that was done overseas, honey. They said Rick, dressed in civilian clothes, knocked on the door of an upstairs apartment; their feeling’s that it was somewhere in the
Washington
area. When the person inside opened the door, Rick hit him twice and he fell to the floor unconscious. Then he dragged the man into a bedroom, put him face down on the bed and shot him behind his left ear. Then he unscrewed part of the gun barrel, put it in his pocket, and wrapped the dead man’s fingers around the weapon. Then he proceeded to search the apartment before he left. If it’s actually true, there may be an explanation for it, but based on what you’ve told me so far, their visions seem to be pretty accurate.”

“Sonofabitch!” Jack spat out. “It must’ve been that- Underhill! The guy, some kind of spook, whose killing Rick told me that he turned down! And shit, I was sorry for him! He was just stringing me along that whole time about coming into FlxAir. Coming down to
Puerto Rico
with a sob story about being recruited to kill this guy. What he was really there to do was to see what I’d tell him about what I knew about the FlxAir plane being lost at sea. What a goddamn mess!” Raising both fists in the air, he brought them down hard on his knees. “But why? What in the hell are they doing bringing you into all this? The last thing I want is for you to be in any danger because of something I did. All Diana had to do was to call me.”

Serena looked at her son with deep concern. “Diana said that Rick had come to see them just after Christmas, honey, and asked them about your being with them at the time of the assassination. They told him that you’d stayed there with them on Wednesday night, and left very early the next morning without saying goodbye. She said they didn’t think much about it at the time, but then a few days later they had the vision of you getting on the airplane at Bisque. They kept quiet about that, but Rick called them right after Mother’s Day this year, asking them all of the same questions he’d asked them the year before. Soon after that, they had the vision of him killing this man in his apartment.”

“Did she say they told him about that?”

“Seeing you get into the plane?”

“Yes, goddamit, yes! Did she?” Jack said in a low-pitched hiss.

For the first time in her life, Serena felt an icicle of fear of her son creep quickly up the length of her spine. She waited, willing her pulse to slow, and resisted the reflex to slap him. When she spoke, it was in a tone that she hadn’t used since he’d left high school. “She didn’t say one way or the other, Jack.”

Before she’d finished speaking, Jack was on his feet. “Do you have their phone number?”

After the briefest of conversations, he slapped the telephone into its cradle on the kitchen wall. “I’ve got to run uptown and see them, Mom. Please excuse me; believe me, I wouldn’t leave like this if I didn’t have to. Anyway, I’ll be back tomorrow about this time with Harry.”

Opening her door to her son for the second time in 24 hours, Serena said, “Welcome, stranger,” smiling over his shoulder at Harry as she spoke. “Hi, Harry. Jack’s description didn’t do you justice.”

Harry took her extended hand, noting the grip strength as he returned the smile. “Hi, Miz Mason. How ya doin’?”

“Call me Ríni, please. And you, Mister, if your obviously inebriated state permits, kindly resume your bartending duties.”

“This is some layout, Ríni,” Harry said, walking to the middle of the room and looking around. “I can’t imagine not feeling creative in a place like this.”

“Thanks. I was really pleased to find this old loft, even if it did cost me an arm and a leg to fix up. I forgot to tell you, Jack; I have access to the roof, just like the old days in Bisque. Not that I plan to work up there.”

“Her Majesty Ríni, the Bowery sculpture queen,” chortled Jack as he passed each of them a glass. “I would say that this’ll put hair on your chest, but I guess that’d be ‘inappropriate.’”

“Nothing new there,” Harry said. “How’d you manage to raise such a little pisser, Ríni?”

“With the forbearance of a saint,” Serena said with a laugh. “Plus a load of luck and a fair amount of input from a guy by the name of Moses Kubielski.”

Jack, grinning broadly, extended his glass to touch theirs. “Here’s to my first flight instructor-slash-benefactor. He’s with Jesus now.” They drank, Serena and Harry exchanging quizzical glances as they digested an Atheist’s gleeful reference to Heaven.

Serena’s first sip was followed quickly by a deeper one. “You know, that’s really nice. Yesterday, I wasn’t sure how rum and vermouth would mix.”

“Not that well; that’s why I leave the vermouth out.”

Laughing again, Serena raised her glass; “My turn; to my ever-inventive son, and his- what? Co-pilot?”

“Captain,” Jack said, mock-punching Harry’s shoulder. “Harry, Sy and I’ll all come out of
Wichita
fully checked out on the Lear Jet. Funny thing is, Harry’s the only one of us with any jet time. Up to now, Sy and I’ve just been recip jockeys.”

Serena’s brow furrowed momentarily. “Re-sip?”

“Planes with gasoline engines,” Jack responded. “The parts go up and down.”

“Some recip,” Harry said, angling his grin towards Serena. “70 tons and 30 crew members, give or take. I do have some jet time, and proud of it, but I’m every bit as proud to’ve checked out as PPC in the Willie Victor. And I know damn well that you are, too.”

“Sure I am, but I’m ready for something a little sportier, and that Lear Jet’ll out-climb an A4D.”

“Hold it right there, and back up for a second,” Serena broke in. “Since y’all are so proud of it, I’d like to know what a PPC is.”

“Patrol Plane Commander,” Harry said. “Means the same thing as Captain. Sorry about the jargon, but we lived with a lot of it in the Navy.”

“Obviously! But I guess every profession has its code; saves a lot of excess blabbing between people who know it. Well, congratulations anyway on being trusted with that much of an airplane, to say nothing of so many lives. Now I know for sure that my baby boy’s a bona fide grownup.”

“And the president of an all-jet air charter company,” Jack added. “Even if it’s just one jet.” And that ain’t the half of it, he thought.

“Well, it damn sure doesn’t have to stay that way, with a little luck,” Harry quickly put in. “There’s a lot of bucks-up types around, particularly here in New York, that want to go places fast, with runways that can’t handle the big jets. And if I were in their shoes, whether I was headed to Podunk or Miami, I’ll be damned if I’d want to screw around at an airline gate with a crowd of people when I could hop outa my limo at Teterboro, hop into a Lear Jet, and haul ass- er, ’scuse me- just take off, and no hassle at the other end of the line, either.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear, buddy,” Jack laughed.

“I hope y’all don’t mind eating in tonight,” Serena interjected; “not only did I want to have you to myself, I didn’t want to have to talk over a restaurant crowd. Chinese OK?”

“Sure is for me,” Harry said. “Bet you’ve got a lot of good options in this part of town.”

“Good. Have a seat, why doncha, and I’ll get Ding Hao’s take-out menu. They’re just around the corner. Those are their pot-stickers and spring rolls on the bar; have some while we decide what we want them to bring for dinner.”

Harry took his first good opportunity to observe Serena in motion as she walked away, stern quarters lightly rippling the caftan’s surface. Jesus, he thought, all muscle and nowhere near a yard wide. And no makeup whatever. Too bad you’re my new boss’s mother; he said you were the far side of 50, but I’d do you in a heartbeat. Not an ounce too much, stem to stern.